Finding Open Textbooks
There are a variety of ways that instructors can find materials that are OERs, public domain, or open access. There are a few options listed below, but you can also get in touch with your librarian for specific help with your subject area!
Open Textbooks
- OER Commons
ISKME created OER Commons in 2007. OER Commons has partnered with over 500 organizations to provide resources for educators.
- OpenStax College
Provided by Rice University and supported by many education foundations. OpenStax provides quality free textbooks to meet your course needs.
- BC Campus OpenED
Open textbook project started with initiative from British Columbia Advanced Education and the BC campus. BC Campus OpenED offers 70 openly licensed textbooks.
- MERLOT II
Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching brought to you by California State University. MERLOT II provides free textbooks and other materials for education.
Public Domain
- HathiTrust Digital Library
HathiTrust is a partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world.
- Internet Archive - eBooks and Texts
A huge repository of text, audio and video files, including public domain titles. You can browse and read online over 5 million books and items from over 1,500 collections.
- Google Books
A search using one of the largest search engines, Google Books includes many public domain books that can be viewed online.
- Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is a top destination for free ebooks on the web and one of the oldest, established by Michael S. Hart in 1971.
Open Access Books and Journals
- DOAB: Directory of Open Access
Academic peer-reviewed books and chapters from 269 publishers (Open Source Titles).
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DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals
Academic peer-reviewed journals that are open-access. When publishing in these journals authors do not transfer their copyright.
Evaluating Open Textbooks
- "Evaluating an Open Textbook" by Lauri M. AesophChapter 9 of Lauri M. Aesoph's book on Adopting Open Textbooks.
- Faculty Checklist for Evaluating Course Materialsfrom Open Oregon Educational Resources
- Administrator Checklist for Evaluating Course Materialsfrom Open Oregon Educational Resources
- Student Checklist for Evaluating Course Materialsfrom Open Oregon Educational Resources
- Instructional Resource Rubricfrom Chippewa Valley Technical College